Shall I Compare Thee to a Drunken Knight
by ThisMeatIsDefinitelyNotHuman
Summary: Based on this prompt by Maria/Luna ( "I'm a poet and I wrote a bunch of erotic poems about you, the lord of this city, as a joke, but then I got drunk and lost them somewhere, if you see them I'm dead oh shit." Merlin has woken up with a hangover and a minor case of alcohol induced amnesia. He need to find out what happened last night and fast.


Merlin groaned as he slowly came to consciousness. As the blurry shapes around him gained form and clarity he found himself on the floor of a pig sty in the lower town. A brown sow watched him warily from the corner as he gingerly stood and brushed straw from his hair. The hangover hit him like a lead weight and Merlin turned to retch, coughing and heaving as the nausea rolled over him in waves. When he had finally regained some composure he noticed two brown leather boots step into his field of view. His eyes followed up the attached legs and torso and eventually reached the half amused, half exasperated face of his best mate, Will.

"Alright there Merls?"

"Help me up you pillock."

"Yes my liege," Will mocked, slinging Merlin's limp arm around his shoulders and heaving him onto his feet. "You really went for it last night."

Merlin groaned again and tried to cover Will's mouth with his hand but only flailed ineffectively in the general direction of Will's face.

"Shh. Less talking, more helping me get home and finding something to fix this headache."

"Yessir!" Will yelled, grinning as Merlin flinched at the noise. He set off at a punishing speed, dragging Merlin along behind him.

"You're lucky Gaius isn't in," Will chuckled as he broke an egg into a wooden cup and handed it to Merlin.

"Ugh don't I know it. I can imagine exactly what he'd say." Merlin affected the voice of an old man and lectured, "A man of your standing and reputation really ought to be more careful of what you do in public."

"Well you should!" Came the voice from the door and Merlin jumped in his seat and twisted round to see the old physician standing in the door, back from his morning rounds. "A poet in your position really should behave more properly. Your patrons include many young nobles and courtiers. You can't afford to have your reputation sullied. You never know, you might even receive a commission from the royal house in due time."

Will sniggered as Merlin huffed and rolled his eyes.

"And none of that from you, young master William," Gaius scolded. "You're just as bad. You were supposed to stop Merlin from becoming so inebriated, not encourage him!"

Will looked down at the floor, shame-faced and it was Merlin's turn to snigger.

Gaius sighed and threw his hands in the air. "You two are insufferable. Anything that comes of this you rightly deserve. Now drink that cure Merlin, you have chores to do." He shuffled across the room and disappeared into his workshop leaving a laughing Merlin and Will in his wake.

"Come on," Merlin chuckled, downing the eggs with a grimace and throwing a bucket to Will. "You can come and help me clean."

Will grumbled but followed Merlin's example as he grabbed a broom and got to work.

"Will! Will get in here! They're gone! My poems are gone!"

It was just past lunch time and the summer sun was at it's peak when Will rushed into Merlin's room to see him throwing sheets and sheets of parchment around the room, desperately searching for something.

"What are you talking about you idiot?" Will laughed. "Your poems are all over the place."

"No, not those poems!" Merlin moaned pitifully. "You know the ones I mean. _The_ poems. The, y'know…"

"The crude ones you wrote about the king you mean?"

"Yes!" Merlin whined.

Will's jaw gaped open for just a second before he fell about laughing and gasping, tears running down his cheeks.

"How could you lose those you absolute plonker?" He gasped, clutching his sides in mirth. "Of all the poems you could have left lying around you chose to lose the ones where you detail, very graphically might I add, just what you want to do to the king's-"

"Shut up Will!" Merlin cried. "They were a joke and I didn't choose to lose them. You're not helping."

"Sure, a joke they were."

Merlin glared at Will until he held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay," he said, his voice soft and placating. "When did you notice they were missing? It might help us figure out when you last had them."

"Right, right, okay," Merlin said miserably. "I spent the afternoon cleaning then sat down to write those commissions for Sir Gwaine. You remember he wanted a poem to send to that serving girl?"

"Gwen you mean? Fat lot of good that'll do him. She's totally sweet on Sir Lancelot."

Briefly side tracked by the castle gossip Merlin looked up curiously before shaking his head hard. "No, no, no that's beside the point. Anyway, I finished up the poem for Gwaine then thought I'd jot something down so looked for my, um-"

"Your erotic love letters?"

Merlin grimaced. "Yes those. But I couldn't find them. All I could find was this note."

Merlin smoothed out a scrap of parchment that had been crumpled in the search and handed it to Will. All that was on it were a couple of words in Merlin's scrawled handwriting, which read 'You're welcome'.

"What does it mean, 'You're welcome'? Welcome for what?" Merlin asked plaintively. "I know I must've written it last night but I don't remember anything."

Will wafted a hand at Merlin to get him to shut up. "Shh, let me think. I might be able to remember something. I wasn't nearly as sozzled as you were." Will furrowed his eyebrows and his lips curled into his patented 'Thinking Face'.

"Aha!" He shouted, making Merlin jump again. "I remember that you were going to show them to someone, someone who would truly appreciate your talent."

"Show them to someone?" Merlin near screamed. He had gone bright red and his eyes were wide. "If anyone in court finds out about them, let alone the king, I'm a dead man. Dead, Will, you hear me?"

"I hear you, I hear you mate." Will held up his hands to prevent the oncoming Merlin Panic. "Come on, I remember we saw Freya briefly in the Rising Sun. Maybe she can tell us what happened."

They'd found Freya behind the bar of the Rising Sun and she took them upstairs to her rooms above the tavern. It took Freya a good five minutes to stop laughing after Merlin and Will had explained the situation. When she eventually hiccupped herself into silence Merlin was slumped against the wall, face in his hands, gently banging his head against the wood. Will was watching the spectacle, making no attempt to help or comfort his beleaguered friend.

"I've no idea where you boys went last night. Last I saw you were waxing lyrical about a beautiful blond lad that had your heart in thrall but you'd had a few drinks by then so I paid it no heed. Said you were going to read him poetry from below his balcony. Very romantic, I thought." Freya giggled as Merlin keened inarticulately from the corner.

A knock sounded at the door but Merlin didn't move to answer it.

"I'll get the door," Will volunteered gently, Merlin's unresponsiveness starting to worry him.

Merlin barely stirred when Will returned to the room. The following silence stretched a little too long and finally Merlin looked up, too curious to ignore Will much longer.

The sight that met his eyes was dismal.

Will was very pale and in his shaking right hand he held a letter on very expensive paper. It was sealed in red wax. Pendragon red. There, pressed clearly into the wax was a dragon. The royal crest.

"Will, what is that?"

"A royal summoning. To the court of King Arthur Pendragon."

The room span around Merlin and he thought he might throw up again. Arthur Pendragon, King of Camelot and the Ruler of Albion, The Once and Future King, and a man with the body of a god had found his ridiculous poem and had summoned Merlin to court so he could trial him and execute him. Merlin was going to die.

Merlin stared unfocused at the large wooden door to the royal throne room. Sir Gwaine stood at his left arm, Sir Leon at his right. He was neither held nor shackled but he presumed the knights had just felt bad for him because they liked his work. Either way, he'd be dead soon so it wouldn't matter.

Guards pushed open the heavy oak doors and Merlin was processed down the room to the feet of the man sitting in the throne at the far end. To Merlin's utter shock, Arthur Pendragon, the subject of his every night-time, and daytime fantasy come to think of it, was not glaring at him with anything even remotely approaching fury. Instead, he was smiling. Merlin was so confused he didn't know what to do, so he let the knights usher him towards the king.

When he reached the throne he dropped to one knee, touched his right hand to his forelock and croaked, "Your majesty."

"Merlin!" The king beamed. "Glad you could make it."

Arthur was glad Merlin could make it to his own death trial? The man certainly had a sick sense of humour. Merlin could feel his hands and legs trembling and dared not get up from his kneeling position.

"Come on Merlin, no need to stand on formality. You don't have to keep kneeling," Arthur said gently. "I simply brought you here to discuss what payment you would find acceptable for a poem?"

Merlin's heart skipped a beat and it was a few seconds before he remembered to breath. "You're offering me a job?" He gasped.

"Of course." Now it was Arthur's turn to be confused. "Why else would I have summoned you? I want to present Queen Mithian a gift for her birthday and what better than a verse from the land's finest poet?"

"What indeed!" Merlin yelped hysterically. He took a moment to take a deep breath before answering again, "I would be honoured to perform such a commission."

"Good, I am glad you could acquiesce," Arthur smiled. Then he rose, his cloak billowing around him as he descended from the dais and strode down the room. Nobles bowed as he passed and Merlin bent low, caught off-guard yet again when the king's boots stopped briefly in front of him. He felt a brief warmth as the king leant down to reach his ear and whispered, "Maybe in the future you should be more careful about where you leave your more lurid works lying around. One might get ideas about a man's intentions."

Arthur's voice was low and husky, completely different from the commanding, benign tone he'd used only moments before and Merlin shivered, a flush working its way up his cheeks and down his chest. He dared not look up and by the time he had even begun to formulate a response the king had moved on and was almost out the room.

From across the room Sir Gwaine gave him a roguish wink and a smile and Merlin, if possible, blushed even harder. He felt he may expect to receive another royal summons quite soon, except this one would not be to the royal throne room for the sake of a commission.

Will would never let him live this down.


End file.
